DEVELOPMENT BLACKBURN MONOPLANES
Robert Blackburn was born at Kirkstall near Leeds in March 1885, the eldest son of engineer George William Blackburn and his wife Kate. Fair-haired and long-legged, with a kindly temperament, young Robert attended Leeds Modern School before gaining a first-class engineering degree at the city’s university. In 1906, aged 21 he became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
Robert joined the firm of Thomas Green and Sons, Leeds-based makers of agricultural and industrial machinery, where his father was works manager. Finding life there rather slow, after a year he left to travel France, Belgium and Germany, studying modern continental engineering methods.
By 1908 he was working in Rouen for a civil engineering consultant, but in August he journeyed to Le Mans. At the nearby Hunaudières racecourse he watched Wilbur Wright display his inspirational biplane. He also travelled to Issy-les-Moulineaux flying field, south-west of Paris, to see the fledgling aviators there. Imagination fired, Robert moved to the French capital; in a modest guesthouse he began drafting his first aeroplane. Later he said of that time, “I realised that the aviation ‘bug’ was well and truly in my blood.”
